Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Ever-Happy Mouse Sheds Light on Depression

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the happy-go-lucky dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Scientists have bred a strain of mouse that's permanently cheerful, in hopes of better understanding and treating depression in people. By breeding mice lacking the TREK-1 gene, which is involved in serotonin transmission, researchers were able create a depression-resistant strain. They say it's the first time depression has been eliminated through genetic alteration of an organism."

16 of 452 comments (clear)

  1. Today's Philosphical question... by atomicstrawberry · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you're incapable of depression, and you're always happy, how do you know if you really are happy?

    1. Re:Today's Philosphical question... by sporkme · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The same question goes for antidepressant drugs. I have spent long hours debating this with a doped up roomate as he gleefully skipped from psychoactive to psychoactive about the benefits and detriments of mommy's little helpers. I know that they got him through some difficult spots (without the psychotic episodes of his adolescence), but they also stifled his writing ability and effictively stopped his songwriting.

      He was successful in college and in work thanks to these drugs, but was he truly happy without poetry and music?

      Maybe Winston Smith can shed some light on this.

      --
      FairTax baby!
    2. Re:Today's Philosphical question... by feyhunde · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I have to argue the reverse, I'm only able to write on the anti-depressants, as depression is complex and arrests my motivation for writing, as well as clearing the wooly cobwebs in my brain that make the process so hard.

      --
      I'd say more, but my guild is raiding.
    3. Re:Today's Philosphical question... by edunbar93 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      He was successful in college and in work thanks to these drugs, but was he truly happy without poetry and music?

      To quote Trent Reznor: "I don't write a lot when I'm happy."

      I have a theory that says that the function of modern art is for the viewer to live vicariously through the artist's insanity. Van Gogh was famous for this. So was Leonard Cohen, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain, Alan Ginsberg, Salvador Dali, and Jackson Pollock, to name a few.

      Perhaps the question isn't "can he be happy without his poetry", but "can he make good poetry without his sadness".

      --
      "No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
    4. Re:Today's Philosphical question... by kripkenstein · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "If you're incapable of depression, and you're always happy, how do you know if you really are happy?"

      You find that you spend less time planning your suicide than you used to.

    5. Re:Today's Philosphical question... by feepness · · Score: 5, Insightful

      He was successful in college and in work thanks to these drugs, but was he truly happy without poetry and music?

      I'm not a big fan of permanently medicating the mind unless absolutely necessary... but when I had a episode of depression brought on by major illness, I wasn't thinking about poetry and music.

      I was thinking pretty much constantly about killing myself. Not little fantasies "God I should just shoot myself." No... we're talking cold, calm, and consistent thoughts. Very frightening in retrospect and even more frightening that it felt so normal at the time.

      Thank goodness I had family/friends to point me towards medical care. Lexapro changed that like a light switch, and the depression (and anti-depressants) are just a memory. But for some the depression is chronic and the treatment will probably need to be permanent.

      And yes, before that happened I never understood the potential severity and use for anti-depressants either. Anti-depressants aren't just about turning off maudlin thoughts of missing your dead turtle.

    6. Re:Today's Philosphical question... by the_duke_of_hazzard · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If you'd ever been depressed, you'd know the answer to that.

    7. Re:Today's Philosphical question... by mgblst · · Score: 3, Insightful

      ...but they also stifled his writing ability and effictively stopped his songwriting.
       
      Well is writing wasn't making him happy, probably good that he stopped. Writing can make you think a lot about your problems, and if this is something you find it hard to handle (or you have some major problems), then it can be a negative event.

      Being happy means not thinking too much about the bad things.

    8. Re:Today's Philosphical question... by Ginger+Unicorn · · Score: 5, Insightful

      i'd rather be incapable of writing than be depressed. and as for not knowing what happiness is without experiencing depression that is a load of horseshit - i knew the difference between happiness and anxiety before i ever got depressed and now all that shit is out of my system and i'm happy again, i can honestly say my earlier understanding of happiness was perfectly accurate.

      --
      (1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
    9. Re:Today's Philosphical question... by gad_zuki! · · Score: 4, Insightful

      >mommy's little helpers

      That phrase is about valium abuse in the 60s, not antidepressants which take 4 weeks to begin working. Mental illness is a real illness and youre attitude certainly doesnt help. You have a friend who is sick and takes a drug to normalize his moods and you're mocking him? Calling him doped up? Gee, no wonder he's depressed. With friends like you who needs enemies?

      As far as the 'kills creativity' argument goes. Who knows. I think its vastly overplayed. "Art" created by people who are depressed or manic tends to be shit anyway. The people with real talent will always shine through regardless of moods. Tons of creative people have been treated for some kind of mental illness and they remained producive afterwards.

      If the normalization effect makes someone say "I'd rather do this now" then more power to them. Not to mention, depression kills, I'd rather have a living friend than a suicide victim songmaker.

  2. Makes you not care? by siegesama · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I wonder how closely depression and negative emotions like outrage, regret, etc are tied together? If I'm unable to be depressed, would I be able to care about what seems to be a series of bad things shaping the world? People I've met on anti-depressants can be pretty non-chalant regarding just about everything, so long as they're on their pills.

    If you can see where I'm going with this, you're probably a paranoid conspiracy theorist too.

    --
    what the hell is a 'junk character', anyway?
    1. Re:Makes you not care? by wwahammy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That's like saying to a person with diabetes "Don't use insulin. Mind over matter." There was a study read about a few days ago where they found out that mice who have a certain active gene will be unable to regulate mind serotonin correctly. In other words, when a person started to become depressed, most people's brains would compensate for the significantly by releasing more serotonin to the right areas. However if this gene is active the brain (as it seems to be in a large percentage of those who have depression) wouldn't react at all and the serotonin would continue to drop and stay low. My medication helps my brain keep a constant, higher amount of serotonin in the synaps (that's spelled wrong).

      I'm not scared of the dark side of me... I'm scared of the years of misery and pain (physical as well as mental and emotional) that I had before my depression was treated. I'm not out of the woods yet but I don't feel sad and in pain every second of every day. I dislike some of the side effects of my anti-depressants (apathy towards waking up at a set time, eliminates some of my creativity) but I consider the side effects a small price to pay for what I get in return. Research like this makes me hopeful towards better treatments with fewer side effects and I don't have to give anything or as much up to feel... okay.

      I'm not happy all the time (nor would I want to be). I think I have a fuller range of emotions than I did before. I have a heightened empathy because I don't need to focus as much of my energy on my emotions all the time. I like being able to be sad sometimes and happy othertimes which I really couldn't get before.

    2. Re:Makes you not care? by Chandragupta · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Your sense of "depressed," i.e. not in a good mood , saddened, or discouraged by identifiable events, is confused with clinical depression, which is a horrible, debilitating, illness.

      In situational depression, e.g. death of a loved one, there is a clear exogenous cause of the depression. This is normal, and is usually worked out "solo" or through counseling, sans medication, or in some intractable cases with short-term use of medication. However, chronic clinical depression, dysthymic disorder, and their ilk are pathological. Depression is a disease. Your method works for most healthy people, but a clinically depressed patient is in open-loop mode: logic, reasoning and "working it out," as you say, don't work. It is wonderful that you are healthy and have worked out your own problems on your own sans pills, but the lives of countless people--whose brains are wired differently than you--have been saved or extended by antidepressants.

      Insightful? Believe it or not, there are people who cannot function or would be dead were it not for antidepressants and counseling. Talk to people who have had the actual disease. Empathy will come to you as you grow up and get outside your own myopic view of the universe.

      Chandra

  3. Re:May not generalize to humans by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Depression is more about how one feels about a situation rather than what one thinks.

    I beleive I am capable of thinking dispairing thoughts if needed, without having to be depressed. But from past experience I have found that repeating thought patterns which carry subtle emotional cues will have more emotional impact over time, which are very difficult to get rid of once they take hold.

    If this is the case then it is best to have a change in enviroment and focus on changing your thought patterns.

    Anyway, what I'm trying to say, think what you want, just don't dwell on your negative thoughts/emotions, it helped me through my depression.

  4. Re:What about appropriate depression ? by phyrz · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Miranda....

    --
    Don't point that gun at him, he's an unpaid intern!
  5. Re:How the hell... by kripkenstein · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Of course, one could argue with any one model of depression in animals. That is why the article mentions that they tested it in 5 models of animal depression. Even more, they showed increased efficacy of seratonin in their brains (which we know can reduce depression in humans), and in addition showed lower corticosterone levels under duress (a common measure of stress in humans and animals), which is indicative of lack of depression in humans (and a good thing in general).

    So, yes, you can argue with any one model, but, precisely because of such arguments, articles (in Nature at least) prepare for them in advance - really, as much as is possible. If someone doesn't agree to results like this, then perhaps he/she just have a problem with the whole model of using animals to test human conditions; but this model has been proven time and again in giving eventual benefit to research on humans.

    Of course, this result should be replicated by outside labs before we accept it. But it sounds like good research so far.